Overview

Cedric Price Works 1952-2003: A Forward-Minded Retrospective by Samantha Hardingham is a two-volume anthology, co-published by the Architectural Association (AA) and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), and is supported by the Graham Foundation and the Cedric Price Estate. The books bring together for the first time all of the projects, articles and talks of British architect Cedric Price, aiming to present his munificence as thinker, philosopher and designer. A student at the AA in the 1950s, Price established his office in London in 1960 and went on to produce some of architecture's most intensely imaginative and experimental projects of the latter half of the 20th century. His work is central in defining architectural discourse around the emerging postwar themes of mobility and indeterminacy in design.

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9781907896439

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In a way, the role Price played in architectural history is that of the Last Amateur, a fate he shared with Buckminster Fuller, 40 years older but occupying a similar niche. The two iconoclasts shared a certain holistic expertise, a non-scientific scientism, trying to make new connections across an exploding terrain of information and knowledge. This is the cybernetic dream of the harmonic reconciliation of man and machine, but it's one that was swiftly professionalised and monetised. Price couldn't have his career now, as nobody would come looking for his advice. Why go to a brandy-swilling boffin when there are so many biddable consultants you could tap up instead? Despite the disappointments, the radical core of Price's work is that it tackled head on one of the paradoxes at the heart of architecture, namely, that true fidelity to the ideas of Modernism means the disappearance of the building. There is something fundamentally communist about this, a vision of a technologically advanced society of public leisure, freedom, learning and equality. The attempt always fails, as we just can't seem to do without walls and monuments. But it's always worth trying. --Douglas Murphy, The Architectural Review

In a way, the role Price played in architectural history is that of the Last Amateur, a fate he shared with Buckminster Fuller, 40 years older but occupying a similar niche. The two iconoclasts shared a certain holistic expertise, a non-scientific scientism, trying to make new connections across an exploding terrain of information and knowledge. This is the cybernetic dream of the harmonic reconciliation of man and machine, but it's one that was swiftly professionalised and monetised. Price couldn't have his career now, as nobody would come looking for his advice. Why go to a brandy-swilling boffin when there are so many biddable consultants you could tap up instead? Despite the disappointments, the radical core of Price's work is that it tackled head on one of the paradoxes at the heart of architecture, namely, that true fidelity to the ideas of Modernism means the disappearance of the building. There is something fundamentally communist about this, a vision of a technologically advanced society of public leisure, freedom, learning and equality. The attempt always fails, as we just can't seem to do without walls and monuments. But it's always worth trying. --Douglas Murphy, The Architectural Review

Author Information

Samantha Hardingham is an architectural writer, editor and curator and has been a design studio tutor across all years at the Architectural Association since 2008. She graduated from the AA in 1993 and her publishing work began then, with several editions of the original ellipsis architecture guide series. She was senior research fellow in the Research Centre for Experimental Practice at the University of Westminster from 2003-09 where she collaborated with Archigram's David Greene on his L.A.W.u.N #19 & 20 book and exhibition (AA, 2008). Samantha was Visiting Scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal in 2009, and has since lectured internationally and curated a number of exhibitions on Cedric Price's work including at the Venice Biennale (2011) and Bureau Europa, Maastricht (2014).

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